Money Trail Board Game (free printable to teach coin names/values)

Our six-year-old is learning about money at school, which is good because he's long been confused about the differences between dollars and cents.

To reinforce his school lessons, I made a simple board game to help him associate the coin values and names with their appearance.

Gather Supplies
You'll need:

• My (free) 2-page PDF of the game board and spinner
• A small, unique game piece for each player
• Heavyweight card stock to print the PDF on
• Brad
• Safety Pin (to use as the spinner)

Assemble
Once printed, poke a hole in the center of the spinner. Thread the small loop of a safety pin onto a brad and thread it through the hole. Open the prongs at the back of the spinner, making sure the pin spins around freely.

Play
Put the small game pieces on the words START. The youngest player goes first and flicks the spinner. Whatever they land on, is where they'll move their game piece (for example, if the safety pin spinner points to "dime," they will move their game piece to the next space on the game board that features that coin. Play alternates between players. Players must spin "penny" or "1 cent" to land on the final space and win.

Read
A great book to pair with this activity is Learning about Coins. Check it out!

This game would not have been possible without the amazing, copyright-free images from WPClipart.

Coin and Paper Race: The Science of Air & Gravity

What can you learn about gravity and air from a coin and a piece of paper? Quite a bit, actually.

Our coin and paper race was fun and educational. 

What You Need to Do It
A large coin (we used a half dollar)
Heavyweight cardstock
Scissors

What to Do: PART 1
Cut the cardstock so you have a circle just a tiny bit smaller than the coin.

Hold the paper circle in one hand and the coin in another. Drop them at the same time. Which hit the ground first?

The coin did. Why?

The paper is lightweight so despite the fact that it's surface is the same size as the coin, it is easily disturbed by the air, therefore it flits and flutters on its way down to the ground. The coin, however, is heavy so nothing disturbs the gravitational pull.

What to Do: PART 2
Now place the paper circle directly on top of the coin. Hold the edges of the coin without touching the paper, and drop them from one hand.

What happens? The paper and coin travel as one.

Why? 

The coin as it falls, pulls air immediately behind, and the paper stays in place on top of the coin because it's caught in the pocket of air.

This is our second experiment from E. Richard Churchill's book 365 Simple Science Experiments book. It won't be our last!

After School Linky Party (3-14)

Welcome to the party!

It's spring break this week for us and we're already planning summer camps for our boys.

Wow, 2016 is really going fast.

I hope you enjoy a few of my favorites from last week's link up!

Ten Apples Up On Top Math Game {FREE} at Math Geek Mama

 V is for Viscosity from Memorizing the Moments

 Inexpensive, Simple-to-Prepare Montessori Grammar Farm from Living Montessori Now

 Parts of a Seed Felt Puzzle + Free Printable at Teacher Mom Plus 3

Game for -am and -ame Words at You've Got This

Wheelchair Books for Kids: Iron Man Exoskeletons from Pragmatic Mom

The After School Linky is cohosted by

Creative Family Fun

Planet Smarty Pants

Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational

The Educators' Spin on It

This Reading Mama

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school, or on the weekend!

When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up, you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board and feature an image on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks.

2-Minute DIY Water Trombone

We've made harmonicas, xylophones, flutes, guitars, etc., but never a trombone. This quick experiment is surprisingly simple and awe-eliciting.

What You Need
An empty bottle
Water
Plastic drinking straw

What to Do
Fill the bottle 2/3rds full of water. Place the straw in the empty bottle. Now hold the straw in place with one hand, and blow across the top of it. 

Move the straw up and down while blowing, the tones you make are higher and lower pitch, similar to a trombone.

How Does it Work
As you lift the straw out of the water, you are lengthening the column of air inside it. This is exactly how a trombone works.

This awesome experiment came from the book 365 Simple Science Experiments. Check it out!

Order of Operations FREE Printable Game

Knowing the order of operations is important. Without knowing what to do first, next, after that, and last in a math problem like the following means the difference between getting the answer right or getting it very wrong.

7 x (4 + 1) - 7 x 2 =

Aside from the acronym PEMDAS and the acrostic "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally," I wanted to find a fun way to reinforce the order:

1. parenthesis
2. exponents
3. multiplication or division
4. addition or subtraction

I made a fun game for us to play.

What You Need

The PDF of the game board, cards, and spinner (download it from Google Drive here)

Heavyweight card stock

Scissors or paper cutter

Recycled chip board (aka empty cereal box) to mount the glue the spinner to

Glue

Brad

Safety pin (optional, but this makes a quick, easy, and effective spinner)

Preparations

Print a copy of the game board for every player (page 1 of the PDF). Print the spinner. Print an extra page of the SPIN cards. If you're playing with more than two people, print two sets of cards (i.e. two pages of each card type and four SPIN cards).

Cut the cards apart and shuffle well.

Glue the page with the spinner on it to the chipboard and cut out. Either poke a hole with a nail through the middle or use an unconventional hole punch to make a hole. Thread the hole of a safety pin through the brad and into the spinner hole; separate the prongs on the back. Voila.

How to Play

Players take turns drawing cards and placing them on their game board, saying out load, "Parenthesis go first," "Multiplication follows Exponents," etc. If a player already has the card they've just drawn, it goes into a discard pile. If the player draws a SPIN card, they must flick the spinner and follow the directions it points to when it stops moving.

If necessary, you may need to reuse the discard pile. The first player to completely fill their game board wins.

VARIATIONS: Have players try to get TWO cards of each kind on their game board to extend play. When our game was "over," my son was having so much fun he suggested we keep playing this way.